The Nightingale: DVD Review

The Nightingale: DVD Review

Jennifer Kent's latest after The Babadook follows similar themes.

The colonial-set Australian adventure has a fire that's hard to deny, but it also features a mother and an imperiled child, much like The Babadook did.

But that's where the similarities end.

In 1825 Tasmania, Aisling Franciosi is Clare, a thief who's in debt to Sam Claflin's Hawkins. With Hawkins abusing his power, and frustrated at his inability to progress postings in the army, Clare finds herself extremely abused and compromised at his hand.

When things go devastatingly wrong, Clare is forced out on a mission of extreme revenge, and in the company only of Aborigine Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) as her tracker.

It may be sadistic in its opening act, and prone to sickening moments of colonial cruelty as it reveals a necessary and honest reality, but The Nightingale presents moments of beauty in among its brutality.

Kent once again presents a story that's beautifully shot, with landscape vistas presenting both the power and terror of the uncharted outside world. Thankfully, it helps counterbalance some of the cruelty that white men do which is sadly prevalent in this piece.

It may be a Western in its approach in terms of a revenge story, however, there are moments of horror as well as Kent balances a nightmarish element of hauntings for Clare.

Franciosi delivers a powerhouse turn as a woman on a mission; whereas it could be a one dimensional role, she imbues Clare with both fragility and fire. Equally, Ganambarr gives an angry yet understated edge to the local man whose land has been attacked, raped and his family killed. There's a definite anti-colonial message here, as the evil of the English is explored (both the Irish and Aborigine abhor the English) in subtle ways.

There's no denying there are hardships early on, but stick with The Nightingale as it's both necessary and the rewards are well worth it, as the final message of personal redemption and choice burn through. 

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil: Blu Ray Review

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil: Blu Ray Review

The MVP of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil's slightly drawn out, thinly plotted very familiar story is not Angelina Jolie's angular angry fae, sadly.

It's Michelle Pfeiffer's scheming Queen, who dominates every scene she's in with a cool menace and is in serious contention for one of the most terrifying villains Disney's ever committed to screen.

In the sequel to 2014's Maleficent, Jolie returns as the icy fae, who this time around has to contend with her adopted human daughter Princess Aurora (Fanning) consenting to marry beau Prince Phillip.

Invited to a family dinner to celebrate, and with most of the kingdom terrified of Maleficent due to a smear campaign that's passed into lore, Jolie's fae explodes when pushed to the edge. Blamed for sending Phillip's father into a coma and cursing him, Maleficent has to contend with a daughter rejecting her too, as well as discovering that she is not the only one of her kind...

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is not the strongest of films to be honest, in terms of plot, and execution.
However, it is a strong one for its messages.

It sidelines Maleficent and the wonderful Jolie way too much, consigning her screen time to too little when she should shine. Thankfully, she makes the most of her moments on the bigscreen, whether it's trying some forced humour with her sidekicks ahead of the family get together or wrestling with the discoveries she makes - the film is less without her around.

As mentioned, Pfeiffer owns her role from the moment she appears, oozing malice and menace with equal aplomb, and providing the backdrop for one of the most truly horrific sequences ever executed in a Disney film inside a church.

There are overtones of refugees here, overtones of humans pillaging and destroying the species of the earth and expressions of the horrors of exterminations and genocide - all relatively dark themes for a family friendly film. And director Joachim Ronning subtly blends them in to weave a film that may be solely headed just for a CGI fight sequence at the end, but that truly does pierce the heart with its horrors.

There's nothing new here in truth, but that's not to deny the impact of what transpires.

It's just a shame that this Twice Upon a Time yarn holds off from wielding its greatest asset - here's hoping a further sequel makes Maleficent as magnificent as she deserves.

Hustlers: DVD Review

Hustlers: DVD Review

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Julia Stiles, Lili Reinhart, Keke Palmer
Director: Lorene Scafaria

Based on a New York magazine article, Hustlers' tale of empowerment of ladies and taking back what's theirs should in theory, be a home run.

Set against a backdrop of a group of strippers headed up by matriarch Ramona (JLo, in no nonsense taking mood) Constance Wu stars as Destiny, a new-to-town stripper, who's taken under Ramona's wing.

When the financial crisis of 2008 hits the strip clubs and stops the ladies from earning the coin as the businessmen stay away, Ramona and Destiny hit upon a new scam to make money when times get tough....

Hustlers is a fine film in parts (specifically its aesthetics), but one that fails to fully seize on what makes a story like this soar.

While it could be seen as a female POV counterpoint piece to Martin Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street, Hustlers' prime failure is in fully setting up the friendships and family elements early on which would inform the emotional bond you feel to the characters when times get tough.

It's a relatively fatal flaw, in among the incessant gyrations and tasteful nudity that never once falls into male gaze territory (thankfully).

The shallow skin-deep approach informs much of the aesthetics of the club, as well as the approach to the characters - motivations are about as fleshed-out as the fully-covered ladies and Scafaria's failure to demonise anyone makes for an intriguing lack of moral compass as the movie plays out.

It's particularly noticeable and pertinent in the final third of the film, which meanders and drifts into duller territory as the narrative framing devices push the story into a she said, she said approach necessary for the magazine interview format to play out.

Wu is fairly solid in this, but talk of Lopez for Oscar glory for her role as Ramona is misplaced at best - her Ramona is a variation of any strong women role she's had before, but unfortunately, there's not enough dramatic meat in the Hustlers' bones to really justify it.

When the end comes, you may be surprised how hollow it feels and how emotionally lacking it is - if anything, this is the ultimate scam perpetrated by Hustlers, a film so wrapped up in all its own take on capitalism and family that it falls apart under any kind of prolonged scrutiny.

Gemini Man: Blu Ray Review

Gemini Man: Blu Ray Review

Gemini Man feels like a film that could have come from the 90s.

And in fairness, it should, quite frankly, have stayed there.

A muted Smith plays Henry Brogan a hitman with 72 kills under his belt and an inability to look himself in the mirror. Deciding to retire, Brogan finds himself hunted and on the run by his former employers - and someone who could be as deadly as he is...a younger version of himself.

Gemini Man tries to tick the action boxes and while some of  and while some of the action thrills (specifically the first chase between the two) a lot of the film falls into the uncanny valley and digital incoherence.

Smith’s younger version flips and parkours like it’s the 90s, bordering between laughable and laudable effects work from WETA digital.

Looking like a cross between Fresh Prince and Smith as Ali, there’s a visual reality that feels like a cross between ground breaking and PlayStation cut scene. Technologically it may be a marvel, but saddled with a dull script and a level of conspiracy incoherence that feels like it’s from the X Files, Gemini Man thuds to the ground with a real crash.

Muting Smith's charisma may help some of the drama, but given how flat the script is, it’s a fatal flaw.

Owen is saddled with little except grim faced exposition, Winstead fares little better with a role that requires nothing - only Benedict Wong emerges with some comedic touches that lightly improve proceedings

In many ways, Gemini Man feels like Enemy of the State and an attempted meditation on an identity crisis, but with a clone edge. 

It’s just a shame that this Gemini Man is less interested in making you see more double, and leaves you more likely to see red.

Dogman: DVD Review

Dogman: DVD Review

A brutal yet intensely intimate piece about the corruption of crime, male friendships and the pecking order of society, Matteo Garrone's thriller Dogman is about as far from the glamour of crime as you can get.

Marcello Fonte plays Marcello, a dog groomer in the middle of a seaside estate that never really came to fruition. In among the uncompleted construction and the grim vistas, Marcello's a popular man with his shopworker colleagues.

But the area has a problem in the form of towering man mountain, Simone (a hulking Edoardo Pesce), who terrorises the neighbourhood and is a volatile presence. However, Marcello, used to taming ferocious animals in his grooming parlour (as witnessed by an opening sequence where a snarling pitbull refuses his washing advances before ultimately submitting to a shampoo, followed by a blow dry of the jowls) believes Simone to be his friend. It's a relationship of subjugation and domination, that's corrosive yet compulsive for both parties.

It's an assumption fed by Simone's cocaine habit, and Marcello's desire to feed it, despite the money for the transactions stopping long ago, and Simone's use of bullying to get what he wants.

With the neighbourhood determined to rid themselves of Simone, Marcello finds his relationship with the brute pushed into more dangerous territory than expected.

Dogman's feel is one of a simmering powderkeg, as you wait tensely for the eruptions to come.

But Garrone (Gomorrah) wisely piles the stakes high, while keeping the drama low. The explosion never comes in the way you'd expect, and yet throughout the audience spends its time willing Marcello to tear of the shackles of this oppression and strike back.

Here's the thing with Dogman though - it's all about a wry examination of relationships.
From Marcello's bond with Simone, to his loving relationship with his estranged daughter via the bonhmie dealt upon him by his fellow shopkeepers, Marcello appears to be aware of what the order of things is and also inherently what the right thing to do is.

When Simone is attacked, Marcello's instinct is to do what he can to save him, fundamentally knowing this is what is to be done, even though the right thing would be to let him die. Equally, when Simone suggests a plan that's fuelled by greed and will impact others, Marcello's reticent fearing for his friends, and also his place in that society.

Fonte imbues his scrawny and weedy Marcello with a tragic pathos throughout - as Garrone lingers on his face (a cross between Peter Lorre, Klinger from M*A*S*H and Steve Buscemi), the conflict is etched deeply within. Physicality plays a large part here from Fonte's almost weedy like posture and appearance to Pesce's towering brute, the contrast could not be more evident - likewise with outlooks.

However, what Garrone does well in Dogman, is to show a man wrestling with his place in the system, a man who shouldn't really take any more and a man whose loyalties are stretched in ways unexpected. This is the tragedy of the slow-burning piece, the price of personal corruption, and the personal cost of crime - it's a searing look where no one is perfect, nobody is innocent, and ultimately, everyone pays the price.

Dolittle: Film Review

Dolittle: Film Review

Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Harry Collett, Carmel Laniado, Michael Sheen, Jim Broadbent, Jessie Buckley
Director: Stephen Gaghan

Leaning heavily into the eccentricities and the weird Welsh whisperings of the titular character, the CGI heavy Dolittle comes across as a strange mix of Willy Wonka-cum-Jules Verne-cum Aladdin that never quite settles on a tone.

A wafer thin plot involving the grieving recluse being forced out of hiding to try and help save a terminally ill Queen Victoria is just the jumping off point for Downey Jr's Dolittle to head off with a menagerie of creatures and a potential apprentice in tow.

But the film is also there to give the man who imbued Iron Man with such gravitas a chance to make gorilla noises as well - it's that kind of movie.

In truth, it's not a mess, more an incoherent folly that dogs Dolittle throughout.

While the talking animals will amuse the kids, what they're saying will amuse the adults less, given most of it is relatively flat comedic fare that lands with nary a punchline.

The CGI is on overload, and maybe a little more breathing space would have given the frantic fare a bit more of the emotional appeal that it needs to counter the general broadness of the comedy and the attempted hits.

Downey Jr's Welsh accent isn't entirely convincing to start off with, and there's definitely a feeling some of it was redubbed afterwards, but it's the mumbling, withdrawn approach that ever so slightly holds this hero back from fully grasping the screen. He never seizes the moment, and while there's some Chaplin-esque clowning to be had, there's no defining moment for this incarnation of Dolittle.

Yet, there's also an other worldly old time quality to Dolittle, a film that wafts by insubstantially on more innocent fare (witness Sheen's cartoon pantomime villain) and feels  like it's from yesteryear as it flits quickly and awkwardly from one scene to the next.

Ultimately, this Dolittle is less a case of the man who could speak to the animals, more a case of should he have done so in the first place.

Bombshell: Film Review

Bombshell: Film Review

Cast: Charlize Theron, John Lithgow, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon
Director: Jay Roach

The most high profile of the post MeToo filmmaking choices, Bombshell is certainly a stylish and spirited affair, that's as interested in making sure you can't tell it's Charlize Theron under the make up as it is exposing the horrendous lascivious advances of John Lithgow's slimy take on Roger Ailes.

Mixing the kind of take that worked with Vice and the fourth wall breaking of The Big Short, director Roach tells the story of inside Fox News and Gretchen Carlson (Kidman, in a distracting chin) who sued sexual predator Ailes for harassment when he sacked her.

Combining and intertwining the stories of other women at Fox News - chiefly Theron's astounding take on Megyn Kelly and Robbie's composite cypher Kayla, a researcher who rose through the ranks after an appalling casting couch moment from Ailes - Roach's swift trawl through the worst of what was on offer is as shocking an affair as it is necessarily confronting.

It's fair to say that of the leads, Theron and Robbie are compelling.

Thanks to a transformational piece of make up work, Theron is unrecognisable as Kelly, the anchor whose views have bordered on racism and who's been happy to whip the arguments up when needed (a side barely explored in the script); but there's no doubt that as she parades around the screen initially, breaking the fourth wall, Theron deserves every accolade she's being afforded for this portrayal.

Equally, Robbie's Kayla is heartbreaking to watch - from innocent career-climber to deeer-stuck-in-the-headlights victim, Robbie gives her cypher character a heart and an arc to invest in.

In truth, Kidman's largely sidelined, but makes the most of her brief appearances as the chief instigator of the complaints that would bring Ailes down.

But in handling Carlson - and wider elements - is where Bombshell's script falls drastically short.
It ignores the fact Fox News has peddled fear and hate through the years, skates over the more dubious elements of Megyn Kelly's character and views and really presents a paper thin view of proceedings to give an air over definitive style over substance.

It may deliver a polished film that's about solidarity and the truly ugly side of Roger Ailes (Lithgow is fantastic throughout, a repugnant no-holds barred take on the man) but Bombshell never quite lives up to the title it aspires to. Sure, it's an explosive film in parts, but overall, it's a muffled muted bang that it delivers.